


Like she's walking on a wire in the circus...

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 17:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10575918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: Set mid season six.What about my ways makes you doubt all these words from my mouth?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foibles_fables](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/gifts).



“It's fine,” she mutters, teeth clenched, smile tired, forced. She slips her fingers through his and he lets her only because it's easier than the alternative.

It's a lie, the _it's fine_ , it's been a long time since everything was fine. Most of the time he doubts that it ever was. Even when her pants are pooled around her ankles and his tongue is running laps around her back teeth, he knows that the rest of her is elsewhere.

But it's okay, because the rest of him is too.

And if he repeats it often enough, maybe he'll begin to fool himself as well.

\---

“I don't mind,” he shrugs dismissively, walks away. He leaves most decisions up to her. It's easier, she acknowledges with a sigh, and so she never presses the point

It's a lie though, he does mind. She can see that in the set of his jaw, in the way his shoulders tense and his eyes flatten. She too scared to want him, to need him for anything more than the superficial. His fingers find her hair often, tangling the strands into knots so tight she's afraid she'll have to hack them out with the kitchen scissors.

She contemplates dying it back to brunette, is almost convinced that the tentative resolve they're clinging to is being held together right there in her pony tail.

It would be harder to keep up the ruse if she were chocolatey brown again.

\---

“It's up to you,” she sighs, digs her fingernails into her palms, bites her tongue. She has an opinion, one he won't like. But she's not going to share it.

She's lying by omission because it's _not_ up to him but she'll say that it is anyway, if only to keep the peace. He hates that he's turned her into this, a bitter caricature of the free spirit she once was. He has no doubt that he is to blame but, at the same time, it's not his fault that she forgot to leave.

He licks at the sweat that beads on her chest, traces a salt line to her chin with his tongue. Her back arches and her eyes scrunch closed. He always keeps his open, just to prove a point.

Her fingernails tear trenches in the skin over his shoulder blades, he feels marked, claimed.

He wonders how long until she remembers that he's not who she wants him to be.

\---

“I'm okay,” he states, flat and determined. He's not, she can see that in the way he's holding himself stiffly against the wall.

It's a lie but she doesn't push him, the tightrope they're inching along is already starting to wobble and pretending that everything is okay is a skill they have both perfected, so who is she to judge? Her muscles twitch with a heavy desire to wrap his bulk into her chest and never let him go again, but her arms remain limply by her sides, deceptive in their apparent relaxation.

It's not her that he yearns for when the walls crumble, and she no longer has the energy to make-believe anything else.

\---

“Please don't leave me...” she whispers, echo soft, her lips brushing the velvety hair at the nape of his neck. He's sleeping, deeply. It's the only time she feels brave enough, unguarded enough, real enough, to tell him the truth.

He dreams about her, dreams that her smile lights up her face the way that it used to, that her eyes brighten, that her pulse steps up it's staccato beat under his fingertips. She's not tentative, not set to flee the next time he does something wrong, screws something up, forgets to pretend that he no longer cares.

He wakes, startled, and the night air at his back is cool. He can't bring himself to call her name, lest he find that she really has gone. Once and for all this time.

He swallows thickly, feels his heart reverberate solidly at the back of his throat as the mattress shifts and a warm arm snakes along his. The relief is palpable as an internal monologue chants syllables and words and whole sentences that he knows he could never bring himself to say.

But it doesn't matter. She'd never believe him anyway.


End file.
